Chapter 9 - The Last SettlementThe final sentencing of Richard Sterling and Cassandra Blake took place on a quiet Tuesday morning in late June, inside a different courtroom on the twenty-second floor, before a different judge who had no connection to the family.
Richard wore a standard orange jumpsuit, his hands secured to his waist by a heavy leather transport belt. His hair had gone completely gray, his face thin and haggard from six months in the MCC detention facility. He looked like an ordinary, broken man who had finally discovered that his checkbook had an end.
Cassandra Blake sat beside her new defense attorney, her head bowed, her famous white dress replaced by the drab green uniform of the federal corrections system. She had pleaded guilty to witness tampering and corporate fraud, her sentence set at seven years without the possibility of parole.
Sarah sat in the front row of the spectator gallery, her father sitting beside her, his large hand resting over hers. She didn't look at Richard with anger; she didn't look at Cassandra with triumph. She looked at them with the quiet, clinical detachment of a doctor looking at an old, removed infection.
As the judge delivered the final sentence—twelve years for Richard, seven for Cassandra, and a total restitution order of thirty million dollars—Richard slowly turned his head to look at the gallery one last time before the marshals led him out through the back door.
He looked at Sarah’s face. He saw the tiny silver scar near her temple. He saw the proud, unyielding posture she carried. And then he looked at Thomas Whitaker, who was looking back at him with the cold, absolute judgment of a father who had successfully closed his case.
Richard didn't say a word. He simply dropped his head, his orange sleeves clicking against his chains as he walked through the heavy iron door and into the shadows of the prison van.
As the courtroom emptied, Sarah and Thomas walked down the central aisle together, their leather shoes clicking softly against the marble floor. They passed the spot where the pearl necklace had once shattered, the white pearls long since swept away, leaving only the clean, polished stone reflecting the summer sun.
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“Let’s go home, Dad,” Sarah said softly, pulling her coat around her shoulders.
“Let’s go home, Sarah,” Thomas agreed, opening the heavy oak doors for her.
